


4.00: Daily gRind

by Amand_r



Series: Torchwood, Season Four [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-10
Updated: 2010-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-13 02:37:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lois Habiba loves her job.  Sometimes she has to say that out loud.</p>
            </blockquote>





	4.00: Daily gRind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blue Fjords](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Blue+Fjords).



> **Beta:** paragraphs, who more than earned her keep putting up with my typos and whatnot, and heddychaa, who did a little read through some of it.
> 
>  **Author Notes:** Prequel for Torchwood 4.0, which Blue is betaing. I love you, Blue! You don't need to have read that to read this. Also, this is total effing crack, sort of. I stole so much from so many places. Notes at the very end.

_Are you having a good time  
With your friends and your French wine?  
So now I'm gonna warn ya  
That there's only so much I can owe, yeah  
Are you having a good time?_  
\--Leroy, 'Good Time'

The bell to the shop door jingled and Nigel poked his head out. They didn't get that much custom this early in the morning, and Nigel only kept it open when he came in because he figured it couldn't hurt, even though the morning hours were mostly for inventory and new deliveries.

The man in the shop looked a little ragged, but stiff. Nigel couldn't tell if there was something wrong with him, but he didn't have that drunken stagger, and he didn't look to be reaching for a weapon, so Nigel wiped his hands on his apron and stepped around the counter.

"Welcome to Wensleydale's Cheese Shop! How may I..." He drifted off when the man didn't seem to hear him, and was instead staring at the glass display cases and breathing heavily. "May I, uhm, assist you?"

The man finally turned to him, eyes lit up, hands raising in a surrender gesture. He licked his lips and grinned, showing nearly all his teeth. Nigel thought about taking a step back, but he wasn't sure if that would be rude or not.

The man wiggled his fingers. "Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeese."

***

The alarm clock was busted. That was the only explanation for being late. Lois was never late. Late was for losers and people with small children. Lois was single, freewheeling, and most importantly, employed. Employed at a job for which she was currently late. She shrugged her purse strap higher on her shoulder and all but ran the last fifty metres to the front entrance to the Hilton.

She waved to the concierge at her little desk, Beckers, Lois called her, and then cut through the back and into the employee halls where she was able to skip the rat maze of corridors, and emerged on the other side of the hotel where the conference rooms and ballrooms were. She slid her ID card on the temporary keypad that opened the box that covered the hand scanner. Palm flat on the scanner, a little beep, and then the lights on the reinforced doors flipped from red to green and Lois yanked the door handle with her free hand. Her other hand clutched a bag of pastries.

Lateness demanded the save of baked goods, her mother had once told her. It was difficult not to forgive someone when they proffered a pastry, Lois agreed.

The room, a converted ballroom that housed their central communications network, storage, and meeting table, was dim and empty. The motion sensor lights stuttered on as she crossed the room, and she blinked in the sudden brightness.

"You're late," said a voice, and Lois almost dropped the pastries.

"Jesus," she breathed, "were you sitting here in the dark?"

The voice came, disembodied, from a still-darkened corner of the room. "I think housekeeping is coming through the ceiling tiles to steal office supplies."

Lois looked up at the ceiling tiles high above them. "They rappel down on ropes and grab our pencils?" The corner was silent. Lois shook her bag. "Apple turnover," she warbled.

"Give me a minute," the voice said. "My arse is asleep."

Lois set the bag on the table and set about starting the day, albeit thirty minutes later than normal. The business of Torchwood waited for no woman.

It had been six months since the incident with the children, the death of Torchwood agent Jones, and the fall of old Torchwood. Five months since the formation of new Torchwood and the start of Lois's new career as a professional alien hunter and redemptive traitor. Four months since the creation of temporary headquarters at the Cardiff Hilton. Three months since the appropriation of the new location outside Cardiff. Two months since the start of reconstruction.

One month, Lois reflected in her little count down, since they had hired Agent Johnson. Dee. No, Agent Johnson.

No, Dee, Lois decided as the woman in question finally ambled into the lighted area of the ballroom and cracked her knuckles.

She opened the bag on the table and peered in. "Ooooh, you must feel guilty, Habiba."

Lois rubbed her upper arms and then pulled her sweater from the back of her chair. It was always cold in here. "Lois," she said, "call me Lois."

"As soon as you start calling me Dee."

"Deal," Lois answered and dug about in the supplies closet for plates and knives and forks from the hotel kitchen.

The door beeped and they both turned to watch Gwen waddle in the door, hand under her large belly, cup of Starbucks in her other hand. Lois knew she'd been drinking decaf since the beginning of the pregnancy, but ever since she'd hit eight and a half months, she'd started to up the ante.

Lois waved. "Good morning." It was a relief that Gwen was late, because then Lois didn't feel too badly.

Gwen eyed the bag as she set her coffee at the meeting table and shrugged off her coat. "There better be one for me in there."

Lois handed her a plate. "I got you three."

***

"So what this means is that we no longer have to worry about petrol for the next three years, once we move to the facility," Dee said, dissecting her Danish with a fork and knife.

Gwen finished her first Danish and reached for her second. "It's a little late to be sinking petrol tanks in the ground, Dee."

Dee smiled. "Which is why we get to use their pumps at the local garage any time we like."

Lois glanced at the fueling agreement in front of her. "We get scan tags. We can put them on all the key rings to the SUVs." Dee chewed daintily and nodded her head. Gwen licked her fingers. Ah well, she was eating for two.

"How are we doing with everything else building-wise?" Gwen asked. She seemed distracted, she always did when food was in play, but every time Lois tried to slip something past her, she caught it. Lois didn't know if Gwen was always this perceptive, or if this was a hormonal thing, or if this was a result of Gwen juggling moving and home and work, this heightened awareness, but it was something to aspire to. Or it could just be a trick, like Batman.

Pregnant Batman.

She was woolgathering, and Gwen was letting her, she realised as she watched the woman lick the side of her Danish and smile. Lois shook her head. Right.

"All the permits are in place, and the builders are finished with the garage, and the inside stripping and drywall placement. They're due to start the eyrie as soon as the weather turns, and the back buildings for storage." She slid the folder minutely to the side and reached for another one, out of the way. Her ace in the hole. "Which brings me to some issues about the rest of the construction."

Dee snorted. "Just some?"

Gwen ignored her and brushed her hand through her hair, streaking it with glaze. "Do tell."

"Tech, as in, we need one, to do...well, everything." When the others stiffened (this was an old argument already--no one was denying that they would need a tech, but Lois's vision of the tech's role in the construction was _avant-garde_ ), Lois leant forward a bit. Her book on assertive arguing said that was a good tactic when sitting down. "There's no reason we can't, no reason we shouldn't use some of this tech to build this thing." She held up her hand and started to tick things off on her fingers. "The ventilation systems of the Paz space stations use nebulisers that eliminate ninety percent of all pathogens and toxins. It's better than every HEPA filter we could get. And we have five of them in storage."

Gwen raised her eyebrows. Lois barreled on.

"It's obvious that we need more than the paltry basement the building has, and the mining equipment from the Tra system that we have in the satellite warehouse could, if we dusted it off, displace whole tunnels for us without digging or bracing. Not to mention that someone who knows what we need should be doing ventilation and wiring designs--"

"Enough," Gwen said, finishing her second Danish and waving her sticky fingers. "Obviously you have thought about this." She blinked and pulled the cooled mug of tea Lois had made for her towards her belly. Everything was towards Gwen's belly. "Tell us who you like for it."

"This one," Lois said, opening the folder finally and picking up the CV on top. "Maggie Hopley. Computer and mechanical engineer working for H.H. Finn in Penarth."

Gwen sipped her tea. "The boat people," she mused.

Lois smiled. "Boats are complicated. These boats have computer arrays that make Twun look like a pedal bike, and this person--" she waved the CV "--designs them all."

Dee wiped the corners of her mouth with her serviette. "How'd you find her?"

This was going to be the fun part. "Owen saved her from killing herself last year."

Gwen reached for her third Danish. "Oh, her." She licked a runnel of icing from the outside of the pastry. "I have to admit that a suicide attempt isn't endearing her to me as a prospective employee."

Lois stared at the surveillance photos of Maggie Hopley, slight frame, waves of blonde hair, eyes that, when she wasn't trying or thinking about it, showed every mental scar that the past two years had dealt her. It was that scar tissue that said something to Lois when she looked at the photos. It said, 'Torchwood'.

"I'll just give you the file and you can peruse it," Lois offered, closing the buff folder and resolving that this was their one. Gwen would see it.

Gwen looked to say something, but there was a beep and they all looked to the monitors that displayed the makeshift rift sensor readings. Lois wished they had more to go on, but they wouldn't have a better set-up until they hired a tech, specifically, if Lois got her way, Maggie.

Dee was already at the monitors, and she was keying in commands. "Apparently there's a series of small atmospheric disturbances that coincide with some radiation readings that started last week." She checked another monitor. "We had discounted them."

Gwen shoved the last of the Danish in her mouth and wiped her hands on a serviette, then waddled to the other workstation and settled in the tall chair. "Oh, look at that," she murmured, "I haven't seen this kind of cluster since I first started with Torchwood."

Lois stared over her shoulder and then thought better of it. She went to her desk and brought up the split screen that allowed her to spy on everyone's monitors.

Dee leaned back and crossed her arms, content to let Gwen take over. "So what is it?"

Gwen shrugged. "Could be nothing. Once it was a rain of frogs." Then she glanced at Lois. "Once, and this was before I came on board, it caused a hail of jelly babies in Llandaff."

Oh, that would be awesome. "How does this stuff not make the news?" she mused.

Gwen shrugged. "That's your job. You tell me."

She had a point. Lois was going to ask what flavour of jelly babies when Gwen peered closer at the monitor, squinting. Lois didn't want to be the one to tell her that she probably should look into reading glasses; Gwen didn't take too kindly to suggestions that she was getting older.

"Oh god, I was wrong. Blynken-hoarde." Gwen sighed. "Why does everything have to be so complicated?"

Lois tried to be surreptitious whilst typing on her keyboard.

Dee didn't bother trying to help. She just sat at the workstation. "What's Blynken-hoarde?"

Lois wondered if her search skills would beat Gwen's mouth. "They're a bacteriological empire that resides in hosts that roam space in large organic vessels," Gwen replied, tapping a few more keys. "They're impossible to deal with and for the most part they don't really bother us, but sometimes they come down and we have to appease them in some way or they threaten to wreak hell on us."

"Can't we kill them? With, I dunno, penicillin?" Dee asked.

Gwen paused. "It worries me how quick you are to resort to the final and macabre."

Dee stared at Gwen, and Lois could see her eyebrow raise even over her monitor. "You are aware of my job record, right, ma'am?"

Lois decided to pipe up before things verbally escalated. "Blynken-hoarde are responsible for the great cheese scare of 1899 and the--am I reading this right?" She blinked. "The fourteenth century black plague?"

Gwen sighed. "Mongolian hoards catapulting bodies into Caffa. Spread sickness like wildfire across Europe."

"The Great Cheese Scare?" Dee asked. "Like sentient cheese?"

Lois smiled at her screen. "We wear the cheese. The cheese does not wear us." The others' blank stares at her reminded of just how alone in pop culture she was. They needed more people in here. Preferably ones who knew about twentieth century television.

"Anyway, they're transmitting, so we need to capture the transmission and translate it." Gwen left the workstation and retrieved her mug. "Dee, I think we have the proper equipment in the tech storage vault."

Dee stood and palmed the keys. "What am I looking for?"

"I emailed a photo of it to your Blackberry," Lois said, finishing her email and ending it with a little smiley.

"How do you do that?" Dee asked. "It's like you're psychic."

Lois tapped her skull. "I know you. And I have the file open."

"Well does the file say where it is?"

"Third chamber, fifth shelving unit." Lois waved as Dee walked backwards towards the door. The drive to the tech storage unit was about fifteen minutes, thirty in traffic. Dee would be back in an hour. Less if she drove like she always did. More if she stopped for coffee.

When Dee was gone, Lois set about organising her inbox. She had three emails from her automatic police scanning transcriber, four from a program that monitored a massive list of keywords on the BBC news wires, and one from Tesco's telling her that the office order was ready.

And three adverts from Marks and Spencer, because she'd bought a sweater there last year and they followed her like a hawk. This email was encrypted and they still found her. She should find the tech who wrote _that_ software and hire them before they put their mad skills to a more offensive use.

Once that was sorted, she noticed Gwen still watching her from her perch at the meeting table.

"What?"

Gwen glanced at her fondly and finished her tea. "Ianto used to do that. Get there before all of us."

Lois shrugged. "I like to be first."

"He liked to know everything," Gwen replied offhand, eyes far away.

"That too."

***

"So let me get this straight," Andy said, glancing about the shop, "the man comes in, acts funny, then touches your cheese and runs out, but he didn't take anything." He raised an eyebrow and glanced at the glass bell cover over the Stilton. "Why did you call?"

 _"He manhandled the Camembert! And the Wensleydale!"_ Mister Wensleydale--Nigel--said, waving his hands threateningly.

Andy frowned. "He assaulted you, you mean, or he touched the--"

"The cheese, the _cheese!_ Are you daft or something?"

Mister Wensleydale was obviously having a bad day. Andy did his best to look sympathetic instead of rolling his eyes at the ludicrousness of the call. "Well, was anything taken--"

"Look, that cheese was worth about fifty quid," Mister Wensleydale said impatiently, stabbing the rifled package of soft cheese with his finger. Andy watched it get squished and figured that if Wensleydale hadn't planned on selling it before, he certainly wasn't going to now. "And now that he's gone and shoved his hands in it, it's contaminated! I can't sell that!"

Andy wondered if insurance covered loss of cheese revenue from germs or something. He was still having a hard time keeping a straight face. "Right, well--"

"And how do you know he hasn't put some toxin in the cheese to spread disease?" Mister Wensleydale began, and then paused before the continued. "Oh, that rhymed."

"Right, well, I suppose we could take the cheese to the lab to be...tested...for...stuff," Andy said doubtfully. What he was really thinking of was the cylindrical 'lab' on the corner with the bin liner in it. There was no way the actual lab was going to test this; if he brought in wads of 'inappropriately touched cheese' he'd be on traffic duty for the rest of the year.

If Gwen were here, she would have pointed to the carton and said, 'Show us on the wheel where he touched the cheese,' and then they would have had a good laugh later. Then she would have dared him to eat the cheese.

He missed Gwen. His new (old) partner was Bruce, AKA 'Bruce the Bruce', a bastard from Glasgow who chewed tobacco and left his spit cup in the squad car.

"I took samples and put them in containers," Mister Wensleydale said, sliding the three small plastic containers across the countertop. They were all marked with the shop's logo and labelled with marker: Camembert, Brie, Wensleydale. Andy didn't have the heart to tell him that if they were going to actually send them to the lab, they would confiscate all of it and bag it themselves, but since he wasn't really going to do anything, it didn't matter.

"Excellent work," Andy said, eager to get back to the car before Bruce the Bruce accidentally spit into his coffee instead of the designated cup. "I'll uh, take these to the lab and we'll check them for toxins, and if there's anything I'll ring you." He picked up the stacked containers and nodded. "Thank you."

Wensleydale saluted. "Just doing my bit for Queen and country, Constable."

Andy nodded firmly. "Right-o."

"Wuzzat?" Bruce the Bruce said from the passenger's seat when Andy slid into the car and set the samples in the center console. He picked up a container and lifted the lid. "Free cheese?" he asked, then dipped a finger in and sampled the Camembert.

Andy thought to stop him, but instead he just started the car and rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Something like that."

***

Dee had been back for an hour, or rather she'd run in, handed her find to Gwen and then set out again, probably to go to the site. Lois had long surrendered absolute control over all things, at Gwen's urging, and though sometimes she still wished she had embedded tracking chips in both of them so that she would know where they were at all times, she understood that something something serenity, something something change the things she could control, blah blah alcoholics.

That didn't keep her from wondering what Gwen was doing. Lois might have asked, but she figured she'd find out soon enough, not to mention that she could just ask if she was dying of curiosity. There was just something satisfying about deducing oneself.

"Lois," Gwen said as Lois finally finished the morning busywork and reported to Gwen at her open cubicle for 'special assignment'. "Lois, Lois, Lois." She smiled. "I want you to remember right now how much you love working for Torchwood."

This was not a good sign. This was either the start of a reprimand (and Lois couldn't for the life of her think of a reason she'd be chitted now, unless it was her lateness, oh no) or the beginning of a bad assignment.

"If it's about the tardiness, I promise to try--"

"You were late?" Gwen asked, cocking her head. "You can _be_ late?"

Lois felt her skin flush. She kneaded her fingers in front of her. "Well, sometimes my alarms just don't go off. Or maybe I sleep through them. I was thinking of setting several, or perhaps a series of volume checks--"

"Lois," Gwen said suddenly. "You can be late."

"I know, but I--"

Gwen lifted a hand. "Really. You can be late. So--" She turned then, dropping her hand and apparently the subject. "This," she said, pressing the button on her computer and adjusting the speakers, "is the Blynken-hoarde."

Lois listened intently as the speakers hissed, and then the message, a garbled mechanical voice, rambled on.

"Items located at four four seven three six nine four four four point three seven one two two--"

"And it goes on like that for ages," Gwen said, shutting off her speakers and plugging in a USB cord. "The last time they were here they sent us on a merry chase, but it was successful." She connected the cord to a small box that was wired to what looked like a GPS device. "The sad thing is that they can follow through on their threats, so we have to take them seriously."

The GPS device turned on and displayed the 'uploading' hourglass that meant, 'DO NOT DISCONNECT OR DEATH WILL OCCUR'. Gwen defied the old adage of watched pots not boiling by staring at the screen unblinkingly.

"The thing is, we never know what they want, or what we're supposed to do for them, because there are, uhm," she waved a hand, "communication issues."

"What are they threatening to do this time?" Lois asked.

Gwen didn't look at her, but stared at the GPS display and its 'DO NOT DISCONNECT ME UPON THREAT OF TERRIBLE THINGS LIKE A YEAST INFECTION'. In fact, she was staring at it a little _too_ intently like--

"Boss, is this the part where I'm supposed to remember how much I love my job?"

Gwen did glance up then, sitting back and setting her hands on her large belly. "Yes. They're threatening to obliterate the entire nation's cheese supply." Then the corner of her mouth twitched.

It took both of them at least a full minute to regain composure. When they did, and Lois unbent, wiping moisture from the corners of her eyes, Gwen coughed into a tissue and sighed. "And sadly, you have to do their bidding."

Oh this was rich. "And sadly, I don't even eat cheese," Lois returned. When Gwen gave her a quizzical look, she shrugged. "It's binding."

"Well, then," Gwen said, unplugging the GPS device from the computer and tapping the screen. "Let's see, shall we?"

Lois sat on the edge of Gwen's desk so that she could lean over and stare at the screen. It looked like a normal GPS device to her. She had one in her car.

'IN THREE HUNDRED SIXTY METRES TURN LEFT THEN TURN RIGHT,' the GPS said, sounding suspiciously like the voice hers was set at, a bloke named 'Richard'.

"This is for you," Gwen said brightly, handing it to her.

Lois blinked. "This is a Tom-Tom," Lois said dubiously, holding the GPS device wired to the small scanning box. The box was solid black, with no switches or holes, no screws or fasteners, only the wire that ran from one seam to her Tom-Tom.

"Well, yes, but now it's a Blynken-hoarde translator," Gwen said. "You're going to have an adventure!"

"So what you're saying is that I have to follow this scanner around South Wales?" When Gwen just looked at her expectantly, she tapped it. "And I do whatever this says to do so that we don't lose all our...cheese." When she said it, it sounded more ludicrous than she could have imagined.

Gwen waved her hand. "Thrilling, isn't it. Oh yes."

Lois stood up. "Forgive my asking, but what will Dee be doing?" It wasn't that she thought she was getting the shaft, but--

"Pouring the concrete on the special domicile and supervising the outdoor range installation," Gwen replied, lowering her head towards the papers in front of her. Then she glanced back up and raised one eyebrow. "Unless you have the expertise to handle that...?"

Oh dear. "Uh, no, that's fine."

Gwen folded her hands on the desk in front of her. "I have a call to the Queen's liaison at half-past. Would you prefer to take that?"

Lois took one step back. "No, no I just--"

Gwen smiled and picked up a small box and tossed it to her. Lois almost caught it with one hand, and then she fumbled and dropped it. It was a box of Senokot. "Just in case," Gwen chirped. "Have fun."

Lois pocketed the laxatives and turned curtly. This day was going to be horrible.

***

'Arcades' was misleading. There wasn't one single game anywhere, just tonnes of shops selling clothes and books and hairbands and crockery. Bertie bopped his head and snapped his fingers as he left the last cheese shop he could find and figured he was going to have a _fantastic time_ , all of hims everywhere. Mmmmm. Cheese.

A car sat at a light, windows rolled down, stereo blaring, and Bertie stopped to do a little shuffle on the corner as he sang along. Good thing he'd memorised Earth's catalogue of songs--there were a lot of them and it was impossible to tell what you would hear. But he knew this one; he'd heard it three times already:

 _'TiK ToK, on the clock, but the party don't stop no--'_ Bertie hummed along and waved his hands for the last part: _'Woah-oh oh oh! Woah-oh oh oh!'_

The girls in the car glanced over at him, and then whistled and waved as they pulled through traffic, and Bertie was sad to hear the music drop away. That was his favorite kind, and the stuff they'd been playing at the shops he'd been round to had been boring by comparison. Now he wanted to find a place to play the video games he'd heard about. He had thumbs today; he wanted to try them out.

But Cardiff, despite having all these arcades, was not flush with the video games. No matter. He'd find something soon. This place was teeming with music and shiny buttons to press. And the girls he'd picked up in the last cheese shop were bubbling with fun in the body's blood stream.

Three young blokes with spiky hair stumbled out of a place across the street, and the sound that accompanied them through the temporarily open door caught Bertie's ear. He watched the boys disappear into a chippie three doors down and then peered at the sign above the shop they'd left.

"Games Gallery," he said. "Yes, please."

He ignored the stalled traffic and dashed across the street and ducked into the gallery. It was dim, barely any overhead light in the face of all the glowing electronic games, each one emitting a theme song that melded with its neighbour. More importantly, it was all dance music. _All dance music._ His eyes almost glazed over.

Bertie trip-skipped past the rows of gun and hand waving machines, until he came to the ones with the platforms and the blue and pink squares and circles on them. A child was at the one occupied machine, and he watched him leap about on the pad, waving his arms and occasionally bending and using his hands.

Bertie stepped up to the pad of another machine, stamping the pads. But nothing happened. The machine continued to scroll words and letters. It wasn't activating the way the boy's was.

"Oi," said a young girl from the machine down the way, "You have to put two quid in."

"I don't have two quid," Bertie said, tapping at the screen. How was he going to get quid?

The girl tilted her head for a moment, then hopped from machine to machine until she got to him. She pressed two round coins in his hand. "Go for it."

Bertie slipped the coins in the machine, nodded to the girl, and watched as the machine's screen graphics burst into a hail of glitter.

 _'ARE YOU READY?'_ the speakers asked.

"Sure," he answered.

 _'HERE WE GO!'_

***

That's what he was going to call today: the Great Cheesing. Andy left the third shop they'd visited, his hands full of cheese boxes and containers. Their mystery man had been busy all morning, moving from place to place, targeting the cheese counters, and then...sticking his fingers in as much cheese as he could.

Well, not as much as he could. He had preferences. He didn't touch the hard cheeses. He wanted things he could stick his hands into, like Camembert, Mascarpone, and in one instance an open container of ricotta. They missed him here by about twenty minutes, and Andy was starting to think that they might have a chance of catching the moron, the tighter the time window got.

The boot to the panda car popped open and he dumped the containers in the trunk. He still didn't think there was anything wrong with the cheese, even after the man had stuck his fingers in it. It was probably some sick sexual fetish, not some act of terrorism. Who attacks the country via cheese?

Even if it was just him sticking his fingers in the cheese (once Gwen had explained sploshing to him, and he wondered if he might have occasion to explain it to his superiors when they dragged this perv in. He fervently hoped not), so he got more bacteria in there. Wasn't cheese made with bacteria?

He slammed the boot shut and glanced through the back window to the passenger seat, where Bruce the Bruce had been sleeping. Andy might have woken him to, oh, say, do his job, if he was actually pleasant to work with, and Andy wanted to see how long the man would sleep whilst Andy drove from place to place and took reports. Andy almost wished he'd have good reason to put the siren on.

But the passenger seat was empty. Andy glanced about; sometimes Bruce ducked into a newsagents for some snuff or a naughty magazine, and he was contemplating sitting in the car and waiting for him when there was a shout from the shop he'd just come out of.

Where was his partner?

Andy dashed back in the door in time to see Bruce emerge from behind the counter, licking his fingers and wiping them on his black trousers and vest. The woman Andy had dealt with earlier followed Bruce out onto the sales floor and smacked the man on the head.

"Bruce," Andy began, "what the hell--"

"He touched my balls!" the woman shouted, pointing to Bruce, who just turned on the spot to the overhead song and hopped on one foot. That wasn't normal.

Andy could feel the blush start in his cheeks. "Uhm--"

The woman must have sensed the issue, and her face turned red as she glared at him accusingly. "My mozzarella!"

Oh Jesus, okay.

"Uh," he said sheepishly. "Is it okay? Your...uhm, cheese...balls?"

The woman glared at him, and then at Bruce, who was apparently more than pleased that Thriller was playing through the store's speakers. "Is he daft?" she asked.

"I've often thought so," Andy sighed. He opened his wallet and sighed at the twenty-pound notes in the billfold. They were nice while they lasted. Then he smiled at the woman. "Let me buy your contaminated cheese, and we'll just...wait. How much is it first?"

The woman pointed at the sign, and Andy blinked. Then he pulled out his charge card.

 _'There's no escaping the jaws of the alien this time, they're open wide, this is the end of your life, WOOOOOOO!'_

***

'IN THREE HUNDRED SIXTY METRES EXIT THE MOTORWAY ON THE LEFT,' the Tom-Tom, who Lois had decided to call Richard, after the voice selected from the list, said politely. 'EXIT THE MOTORWAY ON THE LEFT.'

Lois honked her horn at a Figaro that was trying to cut her off, and she hoped the driver would understand that she was in a vehicle that could roll over the sports car like a child's Tonka truck. The traffic was sluggish in the mid-morning, and she wondered what was going on to make it crawl like this. Richard's understanding of traffic was fairly poor, as he continued to remind her to 'EXIT ON THE LEFT. LEAVE THE MOTORWAY.'

"Yes, thank you," she said, gritting her teeth and wondering if Torchwood was allowed to flip cars off, or if that was something she shouldn't do in an official capacity. Dee never gave people the V, though sometimes she inched the SUV too close to other vehicles for their comfort, and when someone rode her too hard in the rear, she would brake suddenly. Lois had tried it once with the secondary SUV and the resulting fender-bender had instilled in her a healthy fear of offensive driving. Dee-fensive driving.

'AT THE NEXT LIGHT STAY LEFT,' the GPS said. 'USE THE ROUNDABOUT AND VEER RIGHT.'

Lois was starting to wonder if Richard knew she was in a car, or rather that the car was not allowed to fly over buildings and cut through arcades. She was reduced to guessing where it wanted her to go, taking long ways (by obeying the laws of traffic), and eventually coming closer and closer to whatever Blynken-hoarde had in mind for her.

There was no parking on the street, but Lois pulled up to the kerb and yanked out the red tag that pretty much declared that the SUV was a rolling (or parked) holy machine, and touching it would meet with face melting and the unholy wrath of the Home Office.

Once she was out of the vehicle, the GPS was easier to follow. 'GO TWENTY-SEVEN METRES THEN TURN LEFT' brought her to a Games Gallery, the kind that contained all manner of video games for teenagers and the like. Lois tilted her head and was examining the sign out front when her bluetooth trilled and she switched out her headphone for the earpiece.

"I have some intel for you," Gwen said into her ear and Lois pushed into the Games Gallery. The place was dimmer than the brightness of the outside world, and perhaps that was the point.

She leant against the far wall, away from the games and watched two girls pole dance in front of a para para machine. It might have been sexy if they hadn't been thirteen or so. "Shoot," she told Gwen.

"You're probably looking for a joy rider," Gwen said cheerily. She was enjoying this way too much. well, she had a beer keg in her trousers; she probably needed to get her jollies where she could. Lois added another tick to her list titled, 'Why I should never get preggers, no matter how much it seems like a good idea at any given time'.

"A joy rider?" Lois asked. She started down a row of games, all equipped with guns attached to thick metal cords. Two young boys were shooting the blazes out of a cadre of alien-looking creatures on the screens. Her GPS said, 'GO FOURTEEN METRES THEN TURN RIGHT.'

"Apparently the crown prince of the collective-hoarde has decided to take a holiday here and slum it a bit," Gwen said.

"Slum it," Lois repeated. "With...cheese."

"With the bacteria in cheese." Gwen sighed. "Don't ask me to explain it. I was horrible at Biology, and even then I don't think I could explain it in Earth terms."

Lois was cracker at Bio, but she was fairly sure that wasn't going to help her here.

"I believe they referenced our cheese bacteria as 'strumpy tartlets'," Gwen told her and then laughed. "Rhys had an ex like that."

Lois stared at the man doing the dancing stage machine. She covered the other ear with the headphone as she listened to Gwen and thought about strumpy cheese tartlets. "If they were already in some cheese, and then someone ate it," she paused.

"I imagine Blynken-hoarde would get to drive for awhile, until they were...passed," Gwen said. "They control their vehicles through a wave they release with chemicals.

"They won't be digested?"

"If I'm understanding this correctly, it takes more than some human stomach acids to break the outer casing of a Blynken-hoarde body--cell--thing."

'GO ONE POINT EIGHT METRES THEN STOP.'

"So I'm looking for a person," she said. "Acting funny?"

The man on the dancing stage was about fifty or so, with graying hair and a droopy suit that more than covered his portly body. His dress shoes squeaked on the pads as he jumped, coming down on the pads expertly and then waved his arms. There was a crowd of people around him, and Lois watched the screen light up with the words 'PERFECT!' over and over again.

"I would imagine," Gwen replied. "Or in a cheese shop, or something." There was a pause. "Where are you?"

"Hope Street Games Gallery," Lois answered absently.

"Ah, so then a person?"

The man on the stage finished the song, spun, and raised a fist into the air, screaming, 'HOLLA!'

Lois sighed. "Are they dangerous?"

Gwen laughed. "Not quite. Well, sort of. Well, this one probably isn't. What with his cheese strumpets and all."

The man pressed a few buttons on the screen and did a little shuffle. "Can't we just wait for it to...pass?" Lois begged. She had a bad feeling about this. "Eventually, he'll finish with his tartlets and move on, right?"

"Do you want to have to explain to Her Majesty why she can't have her evening toastie when she watches X-Factor?" Gwen made a grunt. "Because I don't."

"Isn't the national dish of Wales the cheese toastie?" Lois asked, glancing about. "Slut toastie."

"Ha ha funny you," Gwen said. "Get a move on." The connection terminated with a chime and Lois pulled the bluetooth from her ear and pocketed it. The second headphone said, 'GO ONE POINT EIGHT METRES AND STOP.' If she went any further, she'd be right on the platform with...

Oh dear.

"I'll just wait till he's done," she murmured, joining the small crowd around the stage. Apparently the novelty of a fifty-something man dancing in the gallery was drawing an audience.

The girl next to her snorted. "I gave him two quid for the first game an hour ago. He's still on it." When Lois's face revealed her cluelessness, she grinned. "He's been going for an hour straight with no breaks. I think he has about fifty credits stored up."

"He's fucking bats, is what he is," said another boy on Lois's other side. "For an old fuck." And then when Lois raised an eyebrow at him, he blushed. "You know, pardon my language annat."

"Right." Lois tucked the GPS in her coat pocket along with her bluetooth and approached the dancing stage. "Excuse me."

"I don't have any extra quid," the man said without looking at her.

Lois blinked. "That's not precisely--"

The man turned to smile at her and blinked. "Helloooooooo." Then he faced the screen, scrolling through the song options.

"Look," Lois said, gripping the handbar of the platform, "I know what you are, Your Majesty, and you have to come with me."

The man pressed a few buttons on the machine and barely registered her. "Naaaaaah."

Lois blinked. Naaaaaaah? What was she supposed to say to that?

"Really," she decided was the best response. "Your subjects are quite irate about your...dalliances with the...cheese," she finished. The person at the next para para machine over was watching her with interest.

"Come on then," the old man said, waving a hand. "Dance you for it."

Lois stared at the platform and glanced over at another machine, where a little boy was doing a routine to a dance version of 'What a Wonderful World'. This didn't look that difficult.

She kicked off her shoes and dug about in her pocket for some coins. "This is ridiculous."

The man waved a hand. "Party like it's 1999," he said to her and grinned when Lois slid the coins in the twin console and there was a shout of, _'CHALLENGER!'_

The crowd went, as one of them might say, bats.

Lois slipped off her pumps and hoped that she wouldn't get some disease from the plastic tiles, standing here in her bare feet. She draped her coat on the machine so that she could keep it in eyesight, and then she examined the scrolling instructions on the screen. She'd seen how it worked. Hit the right places with her feet when the arrows scrolled on the screen. Up, down, left, right. She had four years of ballet. She could do this.

Then she and the man could get in the car and head back to--

 _'ARE YOU READY?'_ the screen asked, and a little title ran across the screen: 'Ska Ska No. 3'. The crowd behind her made an 'Oooooooh' noise, and Lois realised that was probably a bad sign.

And then the arrows started rolling up the screen, and Lois knew she was in trouble.

It was merciless. They flew up in pairs, in repeats, and every time she hit the right plastic pad they burst into sparkles, but she could only see the word that remained on the man's screen (PERFECT!) and the consistent one on her screen (POOR!). She tried to hit the pads at the right time, but sometimes she was early, or late and sometimes she did the opposite of the arrows on the screen. Beside her, the man added arm and feet movements that the game didn't ask for, as if this was nothing to him.

Clearly, he had an hour's head start.

 _ONE HUNDRED COMBOS!'_ said the machine, and Lois realised that her feet might catch on fire. The man next to her did a little turn and then crouched on the floor, and Lois decided that if she hadn't been gay before, she should be now. No fifty-year old man should ever try to 'drop it like it's hot'. The crowd of kids behind her whooped, and she realised that he was now officially 'one of them' and even if she managed to get him out of here, he was, in their eyes, 'the Man'.

That should have been less dismaying.

"He's kicking yer arse, Miss!" said the girl, and Lois wanted to snap back, 'I helped save you from a fate worse than death last year!' but she was too busy desperately trying to hit the pads with her bare feet.

 _'TWO HUNDRED COMBOS!'_ the screen yelled, and Lois knew it wasn't for her.

By the time the song was over she was dismally behind and the man had a score of 99.89. She had a score of 23.7. Lois wiped her forehead with her hand and grimaced. The man did another spin and bowed to the crowd, then saluted her with two fingers.

"Sorry, Miss," the man said. "Better luck next time, pip pip."

"No wait," Lois demanded, digging into her coat pockets. She slapped the fiver into the hand of the girl, who ran off to get her change. "Best two out of three, your Majesty."

The man grinned. "HOLLA!"

***

At two-thirty, Sharon Wasp sat down to a very nice piece of cheddar that she'd picked up on discount at the local shop on her way back from lunch. She did like a good piece of cheese, and the hasty handwritten sign in the shop window had caught her eye. These days, one couldn't be too careful, but she had been feeling a bit peckish, even after lunch, and so she ducked into the clean store to purchase a generous slice for her mid afternoon cup of tea.

She unfolded the wrapping as she sat at her desk. All about her the sound of computer keys lulled her into a steady breathing rhythm. Nothing like listening to fifty others doing data entry to calm the nerves. Her boss, Mister McGreeley, let them take one break in the afternoon, unscheduled, and Sharon was ahead of her workload, so she decided that she'd enjoy her cheese now, instead of waiting for three-thirty tea.

Sharon peered at the wedge of cheese to make sure that she hadn't been slighted in her frugality--there could be hidden mold or hard sharp edges, but it wasn't. Just a little misshapen, as if someone had held it through the package and squeezed. Maybe it had got crushed in shipping and was not up to the shape standards of the snooty shop.

Well, their loss was her gain. Sharon cut a piece off and popped it in her mouth. Oh, extra sharp.

At two forty-five, Sharon Wasp left her desk and headed for the elevators. On the way she filled her purse with letter openers, scissors, and a few cans of antibacterial spray. They'd do until she got to the weapons cache.

***

An hour later Lois's clothes were soaked with sweat. She was sure that she would never get the music out of her head, and she'd forever associate tiled floor with hopscotch.

She was thinking of buying the home game.

Bertie, as he told her to call him, currently had a score of 99.76, but Lois was closing in with a 78.32. It would be amusing to explain to Gwen what she had done this afternoon in order to 'Save the Cheese', and the last bit of her that was capable of separate thought tossed a silent thank you to her mother for making her take those dance lessons.

They finished another bout of Morning Glory, and Bertie was reaching for the controls again. The crowd had filtered away--apparently Lois and Bertie weren't a novelty anymore, though sometimes they came back when they heard the strains of a certain song, one known for its difficulty.

Nevertheless, in the lull of music and people paying attention, Lois leant over her platform to grab Bertie's arm.

"Bertie, you have to go home," she said. "Come with me, and--"

"In a few days," Bertie said, shrugging her hand off and scrolling through the songs. "I still have to go to a nightclub."

For a second Lois thought about what Bertie would look like Dancing Stage Supernova-ing all over the dance floor at Evolution. He...actually, he might do well. Might even pull something, or at least get some free drinks--

No wait.

"Bertie, we don't have that kind of time. Your...collective?" She struggled for the words. Bertie glanced at her but didn't correct her, so she must have been doing all right. "They're threatening to destroy all the cheese in the UK and probably on the mainland if you don't--"

"They wouldn't do that," Bertie said.

Lois leant against the handbar and crossed her arms. "I believe they called your party guests 'cheesy tart strumpets' or something."

Bertie turned to her. "Really?"

"Really," Lois replied, nodding solemnly.

"They don't even know them! They just like to party! They know how to show a microbe a good time!" Bertie stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I waited too long and now I need another two quid."

Lois grabbed her coat and stuffed her feet in her shoes. "No, we're going to do what your collective says, so that your Stilton strumpets and Tilset Tarts can continue to trip the night fantastic long after you've gone back home."

Bertie shrugged, but he didn't argue with her, just found his shoes on top of the console and slipped them on. "Don't ever become royalty, young lady," he said with a grimace. "Nothing but trouble."

Lois put one hand on his back and helped to steer him from the machines; he caressed the handlebar with one finger and heaved a lingering sigh. Oh, for god's sakes.

The girl waved at them as they walked out, and Lois saluted just like Bertie had done. She'd be back. She was three points short of making the scoreboard.

It took her two attempts to get Bertie in the car, as he kept trying to ride in the back or on the roof. Finally, she had him buckled into the five point harness, and slid into the driver's side, starting the engine

Bertie sighed and licked the window. "It tastes like melted sand."

"So, Bertie," Lois said, ignoring his sighs and turning onto the main road. "What's a crown prince doing slumming it with the ladies of the House of Edam?" These cheese jokes were becoming more and more amusing.

Bertie stopped and blinked at her. "You do know. About me."

Lois rolled her eyes. "Of course I know, your Majesty. We had a huge conversation about--"

"I thought you meant this body," Bertie said. He paused again, and before Lois could ask him what colour the sky was in his world, he said, "You're Torchwood."

Lois gripped the wheel. "That I am."

"So am I under arrest or something of that nature?" Bertie ran a finger through his saliva on the window and peered at his fingers. "Rest in peace, boys."

Lois ignored him. "I don't know how you arrest microbes, but uhm, no. Not precisely. I'm returning you to your collective."

"Just this part, right?"

"This..part....is there more of you?" Lois paused at the light and lowered her hands to her lap for a second. She could still feel her pulse in her fingers, like she could after her strenuous exercise routines with Dee.

"Oh my yes," Bertie said, and then looked shifty. "I mean, I might have, and then...no, not really, nope, just me, all confined to this body, yup."

Lois remembered her GPS and sat at the light, reaching behind her to fish the device from her coat pocket. She plugged the headphones into one ear and listened. 'GO THREE KILOMETERS AND TURN LEFT.'

Apparently, Bertie had more than one vehicle. "What have you been doing today, Bertie?"

"Party hard-y."

"Oh dear."

"At least turn on the radio--"

"Don't touch that!"

"WATCH THE ROAD."

"SHUT UP."

'GO TWO KILOMETERS AND TURN LEFT.'

 _'And they say I might become big as a Beatle...'_

"This song is fly."

"Seriously, Bertie, where are you from?"

"Kent. And the Blynken-hoarde collective of Basil9Floatilla."

 _'And I got more street cred than legal, but just in case we keep a big Des Eagle.'_

***

"So I have managed to find the other component," Gwen said, pushing back from her desk. Well, further than she already was. Lord, it was difficult to read from this far away. Lucky for her, Dee just looked up from her task at the worktable and waited.

"Please tell me it's a person and not a mound of yak butter," Dee said cheerfully.

"Yaks make butter?"

Dee tossed the empty bottle into the trash and broke the seal on another one. They needed to find a doctor so Dee wouldn't have to do things like this anymore. Gwen wasn't supposed to work with any chemicals or drugs in any large capacity until the sprog was ejected, so Lois and Dee got more than their share of goo and chemicals and inexplicably sticky mystery things.

Or in this case, several bottles of liquid benzylpenicillin. "Yes, they do, and be grateful you have never had it." Dee fumbled with the aerosoliser knob. "Fuck."

Gwen watched her work for a second, thinking about how they had got here, in this new place because the old one was cinders, and the person who'd done it now working under her in the most diligent manner that she never felt the need to doubt.

Speaking of diligence.

"Lois texted in," Gwen said. "Said she found the main joy rider, but he's been a little free with the love today, and himself all over, so they're trying to get him...all...back." She frowned. "That's just, ugh."

Dee shrugged. "I like Camembert," she said, "so whatever Lois has to do is okay with me."

Gwen laughed. "I think she just spent the better part of an hour playing a video game." The sprog shifted in her belly, kicking something, and she sucked in a breath. What the hell was he doing in there, Taekwondo? "We have other things to worry about."

"The other component?" Dee asked, not bothering to look at her as she stuck her hand and the aerosoliser inside a clear plastic bag and she sprayed it for a second to make sure it worked. Gwen watched her cap the bottle and pull her hand out, tossing the filled cartridge into her little black bag.

Gwen steepled her hands on her belly. It really was a convenient shelf. "Blynken-hoarde Collective Flotilla5 have sent their own emissary to prevent the return of the crown prince."

"Oooooh," Dee said, wiggling her fingers. "Assassination?"

Gwen shrugged. "Looks like. That's where you and your little bag of antibiotics come in."

Dee set about filling another aerosoliser. "Shall I just run about town spraying people in the face with Ciproxen, or do you have more for me to go on?"

Gwen waved the extra GPS. They only had one, and Lois was using it, so Gwen didn't mind that she'd 'liberated' Lois's from her car. "All in here."

"Should we tell Lois?" Dee asked, capping the last aerosoliser and dumping it in the black cloth bag beside her.

Gwen turned on the speakers that monitored the open signal from the inside of the SUV.

 _'He drinks a whisky drink, he drinks a vodka drink, he drinks a lager drink, he drinks a cider drink--'_

"I SWEAR TO GOD BERTIE, CHANGE THE STATION OR I WILL END YOU."

Gwen turned the speakers off and snorted. "No, I think she has her hands full."

***

"Oh, hello again!" Bertie said to the man behind the cheese counter at the ASDA, and Lois wondered if she was going to have to shield him from the glare the man was giving off. This was the third destination they'd gone to, and in every case she'd had to apologize for Bertie's behaviour earlier, when he invariably defiled their cheese products.

"What the fuck are you--"

Lois held up a hand. "Sir, I'm afraid my...charge here might have acted in an inappropriate manner with some of your...wares." Beside her, Bertie began to wander, and she snapped her fingers. "Five foot radius."

"You are no fun," Bertie grumbled.

"Too right," the man behind the counter said, face covered in a sour expression that Lois hoped wouldn't grow in more than that, like hitting or police-calling. "What he did to the Mascarpone is horrifying."

Lois glanced at Bertie, who was whistling and pointedly looking upwards, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He must have learnt 'Innocence 101' from the telly.

"Oh, Bertie," she said, trying to infuse her voice with as much disappointment as possible.

"What?" Bertie replied. "It was a beautiful moment between two consenting--"

"You a copper?" the man asked. "Is he under arrest?"

Lois glanced from Bertie to the man and back again and considered the implications of lying about being a PC. "I certainly have him in custody," she replied, skirting the whole 'impersonating an officer' bit. Lois liked to save her 'Lois Habiba, Prime Minister' ID flashing routine for when she really needed it.

Before the man could ask her any more questions, Lois whipped out a wad of twenty-pound notes. "And I'd like to buy all the cheese he might have...contaminated." She smiled. "I hope everything will be even then?"

The man shrugged. "I threw it in the back. It's all mixed up in the bin." When she started laying out twenties on the counter he blinked. "You want me to fetch it?"

Lois counted out a hundred pounds. "Yes, I do. Bertie, don't touch that," she said without looking.

"It's shiny."

The man behind the counter narrowed his eyes. "Keep him away from the Gouda."

Lois tapped the bills with one finger and saluted with her other hand. "Aye-aye."

The man disappeared into the back and Lois turned in time to see Bertie snatch his hand away from the Gouda wheel. "Wuzzat red stuff?"

"Wax," Lois said, "to keep the cheese fresh."

"Like a chastity belt," Bertie said, tapping on the wheel. "Hey girls."

Lois rolled her eyes. "Yes, like a chastity belt."

Just then the man appeared and set a large brown paper bag on the counter, sweeping up the bills with his other hand. "This is all of it," he said. "Five pounds of blue, three of Camembert, and six of Mascarpone, which, I don't mind telling you, I was supposed to sell to the Eye-ties for some sort of Catholic saint festival at double the price."

Lois dug in her pocket and yanked out a fifty. "For your inconvenience," she said.

"Just don't let it happen again, okay?" the man said, glancing over to where Bertie probably was. "Is he going to dance?"

"Ooooh, listen to the music!" Bertie said suddenly, and Lois realised that in the lull of custom in the store the song playing on the overhead speakers was not audible.

Lois cringed and called over her shoulder, "No, Bertie," but it was too late. She heard the squeak of his rubber soles as he started a routine on the lino floor. The man handed her the bag of defiled dairy and stared behind her, making a face.

"He's really not all there, is he?"

"Actually, there's too much of him." Lois sighed, and when the man gave her a funny look, she hefted the bag. "Cheers."

She was sure everyone watched her drag Bertie from the store, tugging at his arm as he tried to spin with her attached to him.

 _'The dream that came through a million years, that lived on through all the tears, it came to Xanadu...'_

***

Sharon Wasp got off the bus and made her way to the park down the dingy street. The gates were all but closed, bent and rusty, in one of Cardiff's more forgotten parts, perhaps not worth saving in the face of the shining Mermaid Quay reformation. It suited Sharon and her hoarde just fine.

She opened the gate enough to slip through and ignored the foot sticking from the bushes--he'd been vessel one, but his brain was too addled to locomotor properly. It was all she could do to get him to the cheese shop to contaminate the lot and catch another host. Sharon suited the hoarde just fine.

The ship was dying, but it still had the locator in it. They weren't meant to breathe in this air, and Flotilla5 had known they were sacrificing lives, but really, who wouldn't volunteer for a chance to murder the crown prince of Flotilla9?

The ship had sunk into the muddy winter ground in the middle of a wild bunch of fallen trees, dead shrubbery and rubbish bags. Sharon dropped to her knees and crawled under the brambles and twigs. Something snagged her hair and she tugged. Her heart sped up as she grew closer and closer to the vessel, still faintly alive, dedicating all its resources to keeping the gun alive.

Her fingers closed on the capsule, and Sharon sat back in the tangle of branches, prising the ship open with her fingertips, it's living blood already congealed in the veins and arteries, smearing on her fingers like jelly. Finally the carapace popped off and the five-inch gun gleamed inside its wet flesh-sac.

It was broken.

***

Either Richard the GPS had developed a decision making disorder, or their cheese had hijacked a car. Lois had been following the directions for the better part of fifteen minutes, but they never seemed to _get_ anywhere.

'CONTINUE THROUGH THE ROUNDABOUT....CONTINUE THROUGH THE ROUNDABOUT,' Richard said, and Lois realised he wanted her to go all the way around again. 'IN TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY METRES TURN LEFT.'

"The roundabout isn't even that long," Lois grumbled, and Bertie pressed the nub where the stereo on-off knob had been earlier.

"I don't see why you had to go and do that," he said, indignant.

Lois turned off the roundabout for a lark and wondered if vigorously shaking the GPS might rattle something loose. "I can _hear_ why I had to do it."

"I don't hear anything," Bertie said.

"Precisely." Lois listened as Richard told her to 'GO TWO POINT EIGHT METRES. GO TWO POINT EIGHT METRES. GO TWO POINT EIGHT METRES.'

"You know what your problem is?" Bertie said, trying to roll down his window only to find that Lois had turned on the child lock.

Lois sat at the light behind a panda car and listened to Richard say, 'GO TWO METRES AND THEN STOP. YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION.' "I'm sure you're about to tell me," she mumbled, turning off the engine.

"You don't have any sense of--where are you going?"

Lois opened her door and hopped out, flicking the hazard lights on the dash. Behind her the cars already started declaring their dismay in the form of horns and curses shouted out windows. She slipped the GPS in her pocket and headed for the police car in front of her.

The radio was on and loud, and the PC in the passenger's seat was moving back and forth in some sort of sitting dance move. Lois started to put the pieces together in her head and then--

"PC Davidson!" she called, and Andy waved to her as he got out of the car. Lois and Andy weren't on first name basis, but he'd been dead helpful in the whole 'securing the site' on the Plass when she and Gwen had been trying to salvage things from the wreckage, a job not meant for just two women, one of whom was knocked up. Andy had been more than willing to gather up a bunch of mates and day labourers who were also more than willing to do some work, get paid wads of cash, and then wake up the next day with a hangover, missing time and still, a wad of cash.

'GO THREE METRES AND THEN STOP.'

"Miss Habiba!" Andy said jovially, and then waved to his partner, who was also leaving the car. "Bruce, seriously, don't wander." Bruce just waved with two fingers.

"OI YOU LOT! MOVE YER ARSES!" called the driver in the car directly behind the SUV.

Lois shrugged and gave him the V. She was Torchwood, and this ungrateful fuck probably loved cheese toasties.

"GO AROUND BEFORE I FIND A REASON TO RUN YOUR PLATES, WANKER," Andy shouted, and used his whistle. The car window rolled up, and traffic started to flow around the two stopped vehicles blocking the left lane.

"PC Davidson, what have you been up to?" Lois began. Didn't hurt to be friendly. At least she wouldn't have to prevaricate with Andy. Sometimes she thought about hiring him for Torchwood, but she agreed with Gwen that he was better off where he was for multiple reasons. Like right now.

"Oh, if I told you, you'd--" He stopped and cocked his head. "Actually, you'd probably believe me."

Bruce smiled and tapped Lois's shoulder. _'See I reckon you're about an eight or a nine, maybe even nine and a half in four beers time.'_

"Oh god," Lois murmured.

***

Andy raised his hand and clapped it on Bruce's shoulder. "Hold on there, mate, that's out of line."

Bruce smiled and glanced at Andy over his shoulder. _'I'm not trying to pull you, even though I would like to--'_

Lois held something up to Bruce's chest--it looked like a GPS device, and listened through her earphones. She must not have liked what she heard, because she cursed and yanked the plugs from her ear shaking her head.

"You been eating any cheese, Bruce?" Lois said, and then looked to Andy for the answer.

 _"You're fit but, my gosh, don't you know it!"_ Bruce finished, and then did some sort of dance that ended with him grabbing his crotch and making some shout that reminded Andy of Michael Jackson after he started to go bonkers.

"The cheese from the shop," Andy mumbled, suddenly glad that he hadn't sampled the Wensleydale like he'd planned.

Lois pocketed her GPS-looky thing and looked at Andy. "Did you eat any of the cheese? Where'd you get it?"

Andy rolled his eyes. "No, it's contaminated." And when she made a face he held up his hands. "Not poisoned." They watched Bruce do a little shuffle in the street and a passing car honked at him. He waved. "Just sort of messed with."

Lois blinked. "You went to the cheese shops with the contamination?"

This was starting to sound like the whole day on repeat. "Yeah, been gathering samples for the 'lab' all day." He used the finger quotes.

"Boss!" the man in the passenger's side of Lois's SUV lifted his head to the cracked window so that his lips were flush with the opening. "Boss, why does he get to dance?"

Lois's face twitched, and she froze for a second before deflating a bit in a huge sigh. "I don't suppose you have a list of all the places you've been?"

Andy slapped his pocket where his report book was stashed, but he didn't tell Lois that. "Oh ho! This _is_ a spooky-do!" He leant in so that he could whisper. "Are there aliens in the cheese?"

Lois started and stared at him blankly before she sighed heavily and bowed her head. "Yes."

Oh. He'd been rather taking the piss about that. Andy was sure that one of these days he'd get used to this idea that there were aliens and all kinds of things. It wasn't even like they were a secret, after the whole thing with the kids, anyone who didn't believe in aliens was just daft. People accused him of being daft, but it was all an act. He liked to say that it was done with mirrors and Jaffa Cakes. Possibly lager and pork cracklings.

"Whoa, so he's got..." he trailed off and they both watched Bruce the Bruce sing along to the song playing on the stereo blaring from the nearest car.

 _'This comes as no surprise, what you need is an older guy...'_

Lois made a face and turned away. "Oh, that's improper for a PC to be doing in public."

Bruce dry humped the air and Andy wanted to be surprised, but the day had just contrived to fill him with a sense of resignation towards all things. The boot full of cheese bags pretty much demonstrated why.

"I'll trade you," he said, not knowing what he was trading, and thinking that one joke was as good as another, but when he glanced at Lois's face, he realised that she was thinking of something. "Hey hey hey, I don't work for--"

"I deputise you," Lois said quickly.

"What does that even mean?"

She shrugged and was already walking back to her vehicle. "I don't know, but I'm doing it. Get your...co-worker back in the car."

Andy had complied as best he could, and Bruce was in the passenger seat of the patrol car when Lois returned holding the wrist of the man from her car. He looked pleasant enough, late fifties, drab suit, smiling, face a little ruddy as if he'd been drinking.

"Give me your notebook," Lois said into Andy's open window before opening the back door and motioning her charge inside. "I have to go to all those places anyway."

Andy handed it over without complaint. He didn't want to have to go back to any of those places. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Call Gwen," Lois said, "and see if she wants to meet you at the Hilton or the site. You remember the site, right?"

Remember it? He'd memorised it. That was, no, this was probably the closest he was ever going to get to being Torchwood.

Sometimes he wondered if someday he'd wake up and _not_ remember it. Or maybe there was stuff he'd already forgotten.

Gwen wouldn't do that to him.

"Oh, hi there," Andy said as the man finally slid in behind him and Lois cuffed his wrist to the restraining bar.

The man grinned at him and waved. "Cheers! Turn on the radio!"

"If you do you'll regret it," Lois warned him, and Andy wondered what he would regret about it.

"Hey!" Bruce said from the front seat, and then turned. "Your Majesty! How you doing?"

The man in the back grinned. _'Po-leese shut us down down!'_

 _'Po-po shut us down,'_ Bruce replied, making a face.

Lois smiled wanly. "Oh good, you two know each other." She patted the man's head. "Bertie, be good for the police constable."

Bertie winked. "You got it, boss." Then he smiled at Bruce. "Tunes, please."

Bruce snapped on the radio and they listened for a second before bursting into song.

 _"I came to dance, dance, dance, dance,"_ Bruce sang and snapped his fingers on every word. Behind him, the man did an impromptu vogue, framing his face with his hands as best he could when one of them was cuffed.

 _"I'm wearing all my favorite brands, brands, brands, brands,"_ he echoed Bruce and they continued singing. Lois shut the back door and leaned in the open window.

"Full speed to the Hilton. Go around the back. They'll be waiting for you." She smacked the top of the car. "Don't forget the boxes in the trunk."

Andy started the car and grinned. Torchwood, back in business. It had been too long.

Bruce did jazz hands; it was surreal. _"I throw my hands up in the air sometimes!"_

The man in back waved to Lois as she shouted "Bye Bertie!" and then they were off, in the party panda, apparently.

 _"Saying AYYYYYYYYYYYY-OH, gotta leeeeeeeeet go!"_

Andy put on the siren.

***

The bell to the shop jangled and Lois pulled the earplug from her left ear so that she could listen with her right and still talk to a human. The place was lined with wheels and wedges of cheese, and the smell, well, it was better than the smell that all that cheese was creating in the SUV. She was going to have to fumigate the interior, or at least liberally douse it with something. Maybe she could reupholster the seats and replace the stuffing with potpourri.

The shopkeep wiped his hands on his pristine apron and smiled. "Good afternoon! How may I help you?"

"I'm looking for some cheese you might have acquired today," Lois said, blinking at all the displays. Lord, this was a lactose intolerant's worst nightmare.

The shopkeep nodded and waved a hand. "Just got our delivery this morning. Fifty new kinds of cheese! Well. Forty-seven."

"Oh dear," Lois murmured. "Well, I don't eat cheese but I was looking for something texturally--"

"Venezuelan Beaver Cheese?" he offered, lifting a plate of pale yellow wedges of hard cheese stabbed with toothpicks. The smell was something like paprika and sweat. And strangely, pine.

Lois recoiled. "No, no thank you. Uhm, they were, I can't remember the labels now." She wracked her brain, but every time she tried to remember the writing on the samples in the back of the panda car, they were things like 'Whippleshale' and 'Chardonnay', plus that inane 'Cheese song' Bertie had been singing earlier.

"Broad?" she ventured. The shopkeep made a face that indicated he had no idea what she was talking about. She decided to read the giant board behind him. "Braudostur?"

"We are fresh out of Braudostur."

"Okay," she mumbled.

"GO ONE POINT FIVE METRES THEN TURN LEFT," Richard demanded. Lois shuffled from one foot to the other. Brie? Was that a cheese?

"Broccio Demi-Affine?"

"Nope," the shopkeep said.

"All right. Caerphilly? Cairnsmore? Castellano?" She continued the litany of C cheeses as the shopkeep continued to shake his head. "I know," she said, filled with confidence, "cheddar."

The shopkeep chuckled as if this was a running gag. "Well, we don't get much call for it around here, ma'am."

Lois straightened and wondering if he was taking the piss. "Not much ca-- It's the single most popular cheese in the world!"

The shopkeep sobered and shook his head, giving her a piteous smile. "Not 'round here, ma'am."

This was getting ridiculous. Lois could smell the cheese on her, in the shop, and her feet hurt. If she had known she was going to be chasing around Cardiff with an alien GPS all day she would have worn trainers. Gwen had made it seem so simple.

"Cheshire?"

"Nope."

"Carre-de-L'Est, Bresse-Bleu, Boursin?"

"Not as such."

"You do have cheese, don't you?"

"Of course! This is a cheese shop!"

"Camembert?" Lois asked, resigning herself to possibly drawing her firearm.

The shopkeep's face brightened. "I do have some Camembert!" He glanced below the counter. "Uh, er, it's a bit runny."

Lois scrolled her hand and checked the GPS, which was now blinking. In her headphones Richard repeated, 'GO POINT NINE ONE METRES.' "Oh, I like it runny," she said.

The shopkeep glanced down again, and Lois wondered if he was calling the police. She had to look odd, with her headphones and her GPS and her very wet clothes.

"Well," he said, "it's very runny, actually, ma'am."

Lois tried not to roll her eyes. Instead, she grinned as invitingly as she could. "No matter. Fetch hither the fromage de la Belle France!"

"I...think it's a bit runnier than you'll like it, ma'am."

Okay, that was it. Lois gripped the counter with her free hand and leant in. "I don't care how fucking runny it is. Hand it over with all speed."

The shopkeep stepped back and looked under the counter again, and then his face contorted into a conciliatory expression. "Oooooooooohhh...!"

"What now?" she grated through her teeth.

He spread his hands. "The cat's eaten it."

Lois imagined Blynken-hoarde descending on all of the British Isles. Then she realised that Gwen would make her personally apologise to Her Majesty for losing the country's Stilton supply. "Has he."

"She, ma'am."

Lois placed both her hands on the counter. "Show me the cat."

"Well, er, uhm, that's not really done--"

"Show. Me. The. Cat."

There was a stiff moment when Lois wondered if there was a cat, but the shopkeep sighed, bent down, and picked up something, then straightened, a large brown tabby in his arms. "This is Gromit."

Lois narrowed her eyes and watched the cat lick his whiskers with a long pink tongue. She held her scanner up to the cat's belly.

The display lit up. 'YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION.'

Oh. Bugger.

***

Gwen was alone at the site first, waiting for the car to get there. The gating was in place around the perimeter, but the alarm system wasn't installed. They needed a tech for that, and even then, they'd have to keep it off anyway, what with the high traffic of workers scuttling in and out of the place every day.

Still, when it was empty like this (Dee and the concrete men were already finished for the day), Gwen had to manually move the gates, and that was fine with her. She was staring at the empty shell of the building that would become Torchwood, Cardiff and thinking of all the things she would do differently and the same when she heard a muffled song approaching from what was probably the car for which she was waiting.

Andy's black and white patrol car came into view as it trundled down the Access road, and Gwen pressed the remote to let the gates swing open. It was difficult to school her face into a sober one when the car approached and the music became clearer, as did the motions of all three men inside the vehicle.

 _'Ale-ale-jandro! Ale-ale-jandro!'_ blared from the car and all three men who were bopping back and forth in time to the music. The man in the back was vogue-ing. _'Ale-ale-jandro! Ale-ale-jandro!'_

What she wouldn't give for a camera sometimes. Oh wait. Gwen glanced at the CCTV mounted on the gate already, one of the only systems that she had insisted on having on the ready from the get-go. Hah.

Andy cut the engine and rolled down the window. "I have some cheese," he told her, even though she knew everything already; he'd called her twenty minutes ago. "And some blokes wot ate the cheese."

"BUT DID NOT CUT--"

Andy laid on the horn and drowned out whatever his partner in the passenger seat was about to say. Gwen covered her ears and hoped that the critter was sufficiently muffled inside her belly.

Andy smiled feebly. "Sorry, hand slipped, don't know what happened."

Gwen leant down to lean on the open window frame. "You've had a busy day."

Andy was about to reply, but the man in the passenger's seat covered his mouth and belched. "Oh no," the man moaned, "this bloke is lactose intolerant."

"Could have told you that," Andy mumbled, getting out of the vehicle and rounding to open the child locked door from the outside. Gwen smiled.

"Toilet's not working yet," she said. "There's a bucket for you around the corner."

She and Andy watched the man stagger around the corner and then they heard a few noises that Gwen didn't want to dwell on. She leaned against the panda can, and Andy mirrored her as they stared at the corner around which the man had gone.

"Your new patrol-mate?" Gwen asked.

Andy rolled his eyes in response.

"Look at it this way. He's going to make you look great in comparison. You'll make a promo in no time."

Andy snorted. "Could make me Torchwood."

Gwen opened her mouth to tell him something, an excuse, anything, but she didn't have to , because the man in the backseat leaned out the open window, one arm dangling from a cuff on the restraint bar.

"I say," the man remarked, "my compatriot cannot hold his bacteria."

***

The weapon wasn't easy to repair, but with a few nicked tubes and fasteners, Sharon was able to cobble together something passable that would transfer the microbial assassins right into the Royal Host. It was actually a sight bigger than the one Flotilla5 had sent down, but since it had broken on impact, the only supplies left on this planet had facilitated this large thing, rather bulky, actually.

The scanner next to her on the bench beeped and Sharon picked it up. The Royal Host had not moved in about an hour, and if he stayed in the same place, this mission would be easier than anticipated. Any traces of migrant branches of his line that he might have spread about on his holiday would wither eventually without a host capable of returning them to Basil9Flotilla.

She needed to leave this place, a small abandoned warehouse next to the landing site, and she needed to acquire transportation, preferably a solo vehicle and not one of the mass transport things that demanded identification and papers and coins. Afterward, she would signal Flotilla5 and they would send the extractor to eradicate this shell and free her.

She would be glad to be free of this place. She hadn't been to Sol3 since the Great Invasion that humans called The Great Cheese Scare, and her memories of it, and a minor fight she'd had with Earth's protector, Harkness, were still spoken of in the vats of shame on Flotilla5. If she didn't succeed here, they wouldn't send the ship for her.

Sharon cocked the weapon and turned on the pulsars. It would materialise the anti-microbes through skin and muscle directly into the travelling pipes humans called 'blood vessels', and from there they would hunt and kill every element of the Crown Prince.

 

Who would have known that the prince's preference for cheap, one-celled floozies would provide a window for his elimination? Flotilla5 had been ecstatic when the secret of his excursion had slipped.

Sharon slid open the door and tripped out into the darkening world. The sun was going down in this wintry place, and this shell probably was supposed to be wearing a covering of some sort. Oh well. If the Host stayed right where it was, she wouldn't need this shell long enough for such things to matter.

There was a small noise to her left and she only looked because she wanted to see if the rodent creatures that they had used in their first invasion centuries ago had survived; so far she hadn't seen a one in the city.

The woman was wearing black, and she stepped directly in front of Sharon. Then she held up something in front of Sharon's face, and everything dissolved with a faint trace of...berries?

***

The animal clinic was all but deserted when Lois bolted in the door, the cat in her arms. The thing had struggled all the way over and she wished she had a box for it. Her owner, Nigel Wensleydale, trailed behind her, wringing his hands and looking worried.

He ought to be. Lois wasn't above ripping open the cat to get what she wanted. Okay, yes she was, that was disgusting, but she was willing to anesthetize it and then force a licensed worker to perform exploratory surgery. She was sure that any objections Wensleydale might have would be quelled when she told him that if they didn't, there would be no more cheese anywhere tomorrow. When one sold nothing but cheese (and cheese accoutrements, mustn't forget that), the prospect was financially chilling.

The woman behind the counter looked up from her magazine and blinked startled eyes. Lois clutched the cat to her and almost leant on the other side of the counter.

"May I help--"

"The cat's eaten something and I need it back."

The woman glanced at the cat, who was still trying to escape, and then back at Lois, and then at Wensleydale. "Can you wait for the cat to pass--"

"Oh no, no no no, I need this today," Lois said, setting the cat on the counter. The poor thing made a beeline for Wensleydale and attached itself to his front apron, apparently with all claws, if the man's pain-filled face was anything to go by.

The woman, whose nametag read, 'G. Jones, BVSc MRCVS' crossed her arms. "What have you given that cat?"

Lois stared at the woman's face, set and suspicious, and reached in her pocket for the thing she didn't want to have to use. "I'm Lois Habiba, Torchwood Institute." She flipped up the green badge with its crown seal on it. She had to admit, it was impressive looking. She'd done it in photoshop herself. Mister Wensleydale gasped.

G. Jones sighed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The GPS in Lois's pocket chirped, 'GO ONE POINT THREE METRES THEN TURN RIGHT AND GO SIX CENTIMETRES.' Infernal machine.

"It means that you either help me get this cat to vomit everything in its stomach or I'll commandeer your lab." She smiled. "And I don't know how to use anything back there."

Thirty minutes later, the cat lay on the table and Nigel Wensleydale petted her fur. Vet Jones tossed the last of the rags in her biohazard bin and stared daggers at Lois, who shook the plastic bag in her hand and stared at the swirling miasma inside it. She pressed the GPS to the bag and was rewarded with a satisfied, 'YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION.' And then, the most blessed sound in the universe: 'PLEASE PARK AND EXIT THE VEHICLE.'

The end. Oh, bless it.

Lois pulled a card from her bag and handed it to the woman. "Bill this address, Ms. Jones." She paused. "G...Grace?"

The woman peered at the card. "Gretchen. I hope this was worth it."

"Tell me, Gretchen," Lois said, reaching out with her free hand and petting the cat. "Do you like cheese?"

Gretchen raised an eyebrow. "Sure. Cheese toastie's all but the national food, isn't it?"

Lois smiled. "Then yes, it was worth it."

***

Sharon Wasp blinked and shook her head, then wiped her face. "Everything tastes like artificial strawberry flavour."

Dee pocketed the antibacterial spray and smiled as warmly as she knew how to. She'd been practising in a mirror after she'd made a few children cry. She used to know how to be charming; that would be a useful skill to rediscover.

"Yeah," she said to the woman, kicking the bacterial gun out of sight. She'd get it later and dissect it in a secure location. Dee loved getting new alien guns. Bang bang shoot em up and all that.

"You had a bit of a fugue state," Dee said. "Nothing to worry about. Had to do with some bad cheese--"

"I knew there was a reason that cheese was on sale!" the woman exclaimed, jolting even more alert. "I saw it in the window and I said to myself, 'Nothing good can come of this.' But did I listen? Of course not. I don't know what came over me."

"Cheese strumpets," Dee mumbled, unscrewing the top on the thermos and pouring a little bit of the Irish coffee into the plastic cup.

"Pardon?"

"Oh nothing," she amended, handing out the cup. "Drink this. Bolster your immune system."

"Are you security?" Sharon asked reaching up and patting her mussed hair. "Ugh, it's like a rat's nest."

It was a rat's nest, certainly. Wherever she'd been crawling through to get to the weapons cache had wadded in her hair. Dee thought she saw a few feathers, too. She pressed the cup into Sharon's hands and shrugged.

"Yeah, I'm with the Ministry of Health."

"Ministry of..."

"Bad cheese."

"Oh dear. I do hope the contamination is contained."

"You were the last one," Dee said, not adding that she was the only one, and that she wouldn't be remembering this conversation as soon as she finished her doctored coffee. "Now drink up and I'll drive you home."

***

"I made you something," Lois said, lifting the large post-it pad paper.

Gwen took the pad and read it, then laughed and peeled the paper off, slapping it on her belly. Lois admired the official looking Eviction Notice.

"That's not going to work," Dee said, coming in and dumping a box of ammo on the table. "The sprog can't see it."

"Maybe if I ate it," Gwen said thoughtfully. "I am hungry."

Lois pointed to the stack of cheese bags and boxes on the far table. Don't eat anything from there," she warned, "unless you feel the urge to do Mambo Number five for a while."

Gwen patted her belly. "I can't even do mambo number one, so I'll be sticking to bacteria free cheese for now, er, uhm, you know. Normal cheese."

Lois keyed the camera to the cell, and they watched Bertie do some hip-hop dance on the arrows she'd spray painted to the floor. Out of curiosity, she turned on the sound, and they listened to Bertie do a horrific Cabbage Patch and sing along

 _"I'm breakin' dishes up in here all night! I ain't gonna stop until I see police lights--"_

Dee covered her mouth with her hand. "That's uhm, that's quite special."

Gwen shook her head. "I'm sure he'll be quite embarrassed once his joy riders have vacated his body. Speaking of--"

"The toilet has been disabled and I gave him a bucket," Dee said. "Feels just like old times in Grenada."

"I gave him a water bottle full of Ex-Lax," Lois said, and when they blanked at her she shrugged. "Cheese is binding."

Gwen slapped her hands on the table. "Excellent. We'll dump everything inside an oil drum and wait for Basil9Flotilla to send a courier. And Flotilla5?"

"What's left of them are in containment. The rest has been incinerated." Dee waved a hand. "I would have felt bad, if they hadn't killed a man and oh, died of natural causes."

Lois didn't want to ask what 'natural causes' were. some things were really and truly best not to know.

Gwen sucked in a breath and they watched her instinctively reach for her belly before she glanced at them. "He's got a talent for finding my lungs with that striker's foot of his."

"He?" Dee said, tilting her head. "It's a boy?"

Gwen stopped and made a face as if she'd let something slip and hadn't meant to. "Eugh, I didn't mean that. I meant the general 'he'--you aren't going to buy this are you?"

Lois smiled. "I spent all the petty cash on cheese, so no."

Dee rolled her eyes. "It's an expression. She doesn't know if she's having a boy or a girl--oh dear god you do know I can see it on your face."

Gwen was beet red. "I know I swore up and down that I didn't want to know, but when Rhys passed out during the ultrasound I just peeked and there was his little Johnson--uhm, John Thomas," she amended, glancing at Dee. "I didn't mean to." She widened her eyes. "Don't tell Rhys."

"I knew it," Lois said, pointing at Dee. "I called it so early, oh! She snapped her fingers as Dee sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. "You owe me a drink," Lois said, doing a sitting down version of Bertie's Cabbage Patch. "I know everything, everything, uh uh uh, everything, ow!" she finished with a hand raised in a fist and froze. "Oh dear god, I've spent too much time with Blynken-hoarde." She turned to Gwen. "Do I need to be scanned?"

Gwen held the Tom-Tom up to her and shrugged when nothing happened. "You're clean. Are we done here?" she asked, shaking her head and pushing herself to standing. "Unless Lois, you have anything else to teach us."

Lois glanced at Bertie in his cell doing a horrible running man and singing, _'Imma fight a man tonight, Imma fight a man tonight.'_ The scenario was humourous enough to make her wonder if it had all been a gag, a practical joke, but it hadn't. It had been one mad scramble all day. And she'd done it all by herself. This was going to work out after all, Torchwood.

Also, her calves were _killing_ her.

"Collecting cheese labels is called tyrosemiophilia," Lois said wearily, slapping a Camembert box on the table.

Gwen laughed. "Oh, Habiba, you'll do. You'll do."

 _'If you don't come I am going to huff and puff until I am going to blow this blow this whole I am going to blow this blow this whole I am going to blow this house house down...'_

***

EPILOGUE:

Gwen closed her eyes and gripped the desk. Lois paused and watched her. It had been going on all morning. The last time she'd done this had been seven minutes prior, according to Lois's computer clock (she thought about getting a stopwatch, just to time herself on every day tasks, but that felt too Ianto Jones).

"Boss?" she queried, and when Gwen didn't look up, she waited for another fifteen seconds before adding, "have you changed your trousers?"

Gwen's head remained bent. "My water broke an hour ago."

Lois's heart went pitter-pat. She lifted the receiver to her ear and dialed without looking. "Dee," she said when the other woman answered her bluetooth, "We require your driving skills."

Gwen finally looked up then, her eyes flashing. "I'm fine. I can wait until five, and then I'll meet Rhys at hospital."

Sometimes it was hard to figure out when Gwen was taking the mickey. And sometimes Gwen decided that her responsibility was more to her job than to her body. Gwen called it being in charge; Lois called it micromanaging. She knew it well.

Lois lowered the receiver to the cradle before picking it back up. She could hear the jangle of Dee's keys as she swung them on her key ring. Soon she would burst in through the side door and they'd hustle Gwen out the front.

"Ma'am," Lois said, staring at Gwen, "this is one of those times where you want me to be firm. Get in the car and go to hospital. I'm calling Rhys."

Dee entered and veered away, fetching the bag that Gwen had packed just for this event. She shouldered the bag and held out Gwen's purse with one hand. "Ma'am, it's time to go."

Gwen's face looked uncertain. She glanced back at her desk, papers askew, tea cooling in the mug, form still open and incomplete on her computer. "I just--"

Lois dialed Rhys's mobile. "Gwen," she said finally. "We have it."

Gwen stared at her, then. Rhys's mobile rang and went to voicemail. She'd try him at the office, and Mandy would know where he was. Lois smiled.

"You have it," Gwen agreed, and took her purse from Dee. "Carry on."

Lois watched Dee hustle Gwen out the door and heard them pause in the hallway for another contraction. Dee was going to kill her for making her do this, but Lois would ply her with poppadoms later and all would be well. For now, she had to call Rhys.

 

Her eyes fell on the buff folder whilst she was talking to Rhys (it was a short conversation: "Rhys, it's time. Gwen's on her--" and then a dead line), and she sat at her desk doing nothing in the ticking silence for a few minutes. Then she flipped the folder open.

Hrm. Well, she was either Torchwood or she wasn't. She lifted the receiver and dialed.

"Yes, I'm calling for a Margaret Hopley? Oh hello, my name is Lois Habiba, and I'm with the Torchwood Institute..."

END

**Author's Note:**

> NOTES:
> 
> CHEEEEEEESE, GROMIT: OMG I NEED A CLIP, DAMMIT.  
> DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xbDYAsa3uE  
> (OH AND THIS IS MY HERO): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AvEg5fV3v4  
> PARA PARA PARADISE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZe3qEosjE8  
> (THESE GIRLS ARE MY PARA PARA HEROES): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrQRJRwGfWM  
> THE ENDING CHEESE SHOP CRIBBED FROM HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3KBuQHHKx0
> 
> SOUNDTRACK:
> 
> GOOD TIME, BY LEROY: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XFXMvtE_IE  
> TiK ToK BY KE$HA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP6XpLQM2Cs  
> THRILLER BY MICHAEL JACKSON: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5jHhIY8SUY  
> SKA SKA NO. 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzjJuuU463Q  
> WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciMlqMysctY  
> I COME PREPARED BY K'NAAN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx7LNO2D8d4  
> TUBTHUMPING BY CHUMBAWAMBA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5uWRjFsGc  
> XANADU BY OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN AND ELO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1UWSD-FaA  
> FIT BUT YOU KNOW IT BY THE STREETS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPbNMLwmxYk  
> BONAFIED LOVING BY CHROMEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF2AWXyfT2Q  
> DYNAMITE BY TAIO CRUZ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIaFNWOafvo  
> ALEJANDRO BY LADY GAGA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4DEvnQ2FwE  
> BREAKIN' DISHES BY RHIANNA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khiG-AnETjk


End file.
